


Vitreous, Holocrine

by Letterblade



Category: DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types
Genre: Deathseeking, Dissociation, Gen, Mind Control, Torture, implied Virus/Trip/Sei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:22:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3290153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Letterblade/pseuds/Letterblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two experiments meet, briefly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vitreous, Holocrine

**Author's Note:**

> Having found (somewhere in the depths of tumblr) a bit of drama CD translation dealing with the "if you leave here, you will die" suggestion implanted in Mink and the other experiment-jail prisoners, I am pretty sure this is not actually canon-compliant, so I apologize for that and post it here purely for human experimentation lolz.

Sei (a piece, only ever a piece, a fragment) stretches, floats, nestles in the security cameras, and watches the corpse shuffle along, one weak step after another, in Daddy's striding wake.

Daddy has brought the corpse to the experimental facilities for a reason, after all. More testing of the eyes. Always. Sei slipped into the scanners to watch his own eyes, held open with the delicate little hooks he'd come to know too well. The corpse breathed slow and shallow, eyes blank, held perfectly still for as long as needed. Sei rested in the monitor half-aware for an hour or two, feeling wavelengths of light pulse through his consciousness. This was nice. Idly wondering if his power could affect himself, reflected like this. If there was enough left to affect. But experiments weren't something he was interested in.

When it is over, though, there is another test, a new one. Daddy is going to take the corpse around for visits, show him off. One subject after another after another. It is Sei's job to create something within them. _If you leave here, you will die._ Some distant, distant corner of Sei's awareness fusses, feels sad. Sei tunes it out. _If you leave, you will die._ It sounds like a nice thing to tell somebody, really, assuming they're able to leave.

Most of the subjects look up, when Daddy approaches, fear or hope wild in their eyes. If they have eyes. Some don't, and are skipped over for now. A test for alpha, later, apparently. Sei slips into their minds easily, threads between the screams, plants seeds, feels numb.

One doesn't look up. He's hunched naked on his knees in an alcove, particularly heavy chains at wrists and ankles and collar bolted to the floor, like he's dangerous. He's certainly very big, and very strong, and very dark, not like anybody Sei's seen before. The alcove, Sei considers, is insulated, three out of four walls snugly close, the fourth open for observation. A red-hot lamp set above his head leaves the air shimmering slightly. Heat washes out.

Daddy laughs, greets him by name, rambles. Coaxes the corpse forward with the hand to the shoulder, shepherding him, gracious. His favored son. "This one is something of a special existence to me, since he is the last with his particular ability. Ah, but not as special as you, Sei, don't worry."

This one is--sweating. That's the point, Sei's pretty sure. He wanders down the cables, into the sensors sewn into the subject's dark, glistening skin. Very thin through the epidermis. Long bars in the dermis. Tiny samples of fluid dribble by Sei's awareness; sweat, to be picked apart molecule by molecule. Twenty sensors scattered across the subject's body, with the biggest ones over the major arterial pulse points, secondary bars across the surface to analyze volatiles. Throat. Wrists. Solar plexus. The very tops of his inner thighs.

Twenty samples a minute. Sixty minutes in an hour. Over forty thousand recorded so far.

He's very dehydrated, his epidermis withered and clinging to the sensors; a monitor for that dips into the yellow. When it crosses red, he will be beyond the point of recovery, or they will turn down the heat and hook a bag up to the IV to rehydrate him. The needle is already in his hand, between thick tendons that stand out under sunken skin even more than the veins on Trip's dick, and that more than anything makes Sei assume they don't meant to kill him like this. He looks very strong. Some small part of Sei envies him, envies how long his strides must be when he's not shackled. The rest is glad. Wouldn't it be even harder to die, with a strong body?

Thirst is not _too_ bad a way to go, strong or weak. Sei would have let his corpse's jaw loll, panted, sped it up. This one keeps his face clenched, his eyes closed, buries his nose in the soaked and tangled length of his hair to conserve moisture, and breathes very, very slowly, never through his mouth. This one doesn't look up, even when Daddy orders him to. Only the muscles in his bare arms clenching even give away that he hears him, like the voice makes him want to crawl into himself and never come out. Sei understands that much. Sei crawled into himself so far that he turned himself inside out, like a bloody glove shucked off by a technician and tossed aside.

"Ah, my apologizes for Mink-kun, my boy. His people were never very civilized. Still, extend your own civility and say hello, hm?"

Sei's corpse crouches with only a slight wobble, smells rank cinnamon. Wraps its arms around its knees and waits, head tilted, a small smile set upon its lips.

Slowly, eventually, the subject opens his eyes. Sunken gold. Sei feels the corpse's eye sockets ache, dull and distant, and slips in, and the screams inside this one are long and slow and deep, like roars, and will and pride keeps beating, and the corpse smiles sadly. Pride will only make it worse when he breaks, won't it? _If you leave here, you will die._

It does seem like a nice thing to tell him, really. Far, far away, some part Sei pretends doesn't exist, to keep it safe, wraps pink clouds around itself and dreams of death.

* * *

Mink can't get the special subject's face out of his head. Toue's favored son. It should not surprise him that even his own family is not sacred to the monster. It should not. What _could_ be, after all that he'd seen him do? What single thing in the world could give him pause? That is the truth of Toue's reality; even family a tool to be used; it sinks and it sinks into his soul, and he shudders, filthy and weak from the heat.

He's half-delirious when the alarm sounds, and they come to unhook the sensors, turn off the lamp, put in his IV bag, and cautiously unbolt his chains as he slumps against the wall, hair stuck all down his back and murmuring. Voiceless, tongue leather, no breath. The world is distant, his gut churning.

_If you leave here, you will die._

Mink tolerates the cold chill of the IV fluid trickling through his veins until he finds the strength to walk. They were getting repetitive. The third, perhaps the fourth time they'd done this, spaced over weeks to give his system time to recover. But spaced closer. Stress-testing the limits of his body chemistry.

He'd long, long ago given up at laughing at them for how pointless it all was.

The first time, he'd thrown up. Admittedly, also, the first time they'd been foolish enough to give him an ice bath, and his reflexive thrashing had necessitated a call for extra orderlies; they'd learned better. So had he. Now he knew to wait, a little, before dragging out the needle with a grunt and going to find water.

_You will die._

He splashes water over his face and lists, mind wandering, still a little lost in the delirium of heat exhaustion. Undisciplined. He's seen the eyes of men with limbs removed, helpless abominations. He's seen the eyes of those who begged for death, or who'd abandoned the world and gone catatonic. Even those eyes hadn't been as hollow as the ones he'd stared into earlier. Well. When everything fell into place for his jailbreak, Toue's favorite tool would be as welcome as the rest, he supposed, if he happened to be around.

_If I leave here..._

Yes. Freedom. He'd mapped the facility in his head, after long shuffling wanderings. They didn't even bother with cells here, after all. With the manacles and collar welded on, the shock pack and the excess of guards, there was little need. Mink counted every bruise he managed before they ran him down for the next test as a victory, twisted it into his hair because he had nothing else. Snapping a guard's wrist earned him one scrounged, torn strip of cloth in place of a feather; when he escaped, he could replace it.

_I will die._

The tremor that runs through his shoulders is heat exhaustion. Only that, he tells himself. He drags his weak body and heavy manacles to his squat, claimed along the outmost wall he'd yet found--and ferociously defended--and slumps against the cold wall, splaying a hand against it. Outside. Beyond that wall--no, nothing so simple as open air and freedom, he's sure. He'll have to get beyond the sub-basements of Oval Tower for that, beyond Platinum Jail itself, before he can see the sky. But his hand touches the edge of his world, and he can dream, just a little, enough to count as a goal. Open air. The sky.

_If I leave here, I will die._

A pleasant thought, he supposes. A double victory against Toue.

But not the victory he'd sworn to his family's graves.

He runs a thumb, slowly, over the sensor bars embedded under his skin. They'd been there for weeks, with their little ports to hook them up to the computer for tests; when he'd cut them out, once, they'd sewn them back in without anesthesia to make a point, and he'd stopped bothering. Even his pride only went so far. What he does not resist, he will not allow to bother him, he tells himself.

_If I leave here, I will die._

How? He isn't entirely sure, he just _knows_. A thought as insistent as deadened black eyes. Mink lets out a long, hoarse sigh and leaned his cheek against the wall. Open air. Revenge. _If I leave here._ A pleasant thought. _I will..._

"I am already dead," he croaks, a bare wisp of his voice, and raises a shaking hand to twist a lock of his hair tighter.


End file.
